4 ms·
Very cool site. Just one nitpick: "Frequency" denotes the technical speed of vibration, as said in the article. "Pitch" is the human perception of how high or
by Derbasti 9y ago
Very cool site. Just one nitpick: "Frequency" denotes the technical speed of vibration, as said in the article.
"Pitch" is the human perception of how high or low a tone is. Pitch is a "quale", it is purely perceptual, and not measured in Hz. We perceive one pitch for a guitar tone, even though it is made up of many frequencies (like the sawtooth example).
A related technical term is "Fundamental Frequency" or "Base Frequency", which is the lowest frequency in a harmonic tone complex.
In most cases, pitch correlates with the fundamental frequency. But not always. For example, pianos are not strictly harmonic, their higher harmonics are slightly higher than integer multiples of the fundamental. Yet we perceive a single pitch. Another example: If we cut off the lowest harmonics and fundamental using a filter (like in some telephones or cheap loudspeakers), we still perceive the pitch as that missing harmonic. Another example: If you play different harmonics on different ears, we still perceive it as one homogenous tone. Another one: You can play two tones with offset fundamental frequencies such that we should hear a common fundamental below either tone. But we don't, because our brain somehow separates co-modulated tones into distinct auditory objects.
It is endlessly fascinating how human perception works, and "pitch" is surprisingly nuanced and complex if you look into it deeply.
- adrianmonk 9y ago> we still perceive the pitch as that missing harmonic I think you mean missing fundamental here. But aside from that, you make some very good points. The human brain has some amazing abilities to understand what physical phenomenon might have caused the frequencies it's picking up, even if it isn't getting all of them.
- Derbasti 9y agoYes! Thank you for the correction.
- joshwcomeau 9y agoInteresting! I hadn't thought of it that way. Those examples are wild. And yeah, human perception of sound was something I had wanted to explore more, but I didn't want it to be even longer... might be interesting as a follow-up (although I don't know exactly how to visualize it... Thanks for the feedback :)
- pavlov 9y agoThere's an analogy in vision. "Wavelength" is the measurable physical aspect of light. "Color" is the complex human perception formed by various wavelengths hitting the retina and subsequent processing in the brain.